Lesson Tee or Gym?
Lesson Tee or Gym?
Owen P. McClain, PGA Teaching Professional
Kendal Yonemoto is a CPGA teaching professional and coach in Vancouver, BC. He came to the CdA resort recently, where I attended his presentation on the subject of physiology applied to the golf swing and his personal approach to instruction.
Kendal is unique as a golf coach in that he spends half of all his teaching time in the gym. Can you guess why? Is the answer a, b, or c?
a) Fitness is essential to playing good golf.
b) More muscles equal better power
c) Physiology creates its own swing motion.
While both a and b make sense, the best answer is C. The flexibility and strength of the muscles around the spine, shoulder, and hips play a key role in how you swing. Kendal believes that rather than simply correcting a swing, the pattern of your swing can reveal a physical strength or weakness which must be dealt with. Correct the conditioning issue and the swing will often work itself out. Failure to recognize the physiological aspect will result in swing corrections that can't hold up. Yonemoto will assess his students, create a program, monitor progress and adjust. His credo is "find what is unseen!"
Cardiovascular fitness is also important. Improving cardiac capacity will improve your resistance to stress—including the type you experience when you absolutely MUST hit a good shot. It will also improve your energy production capacity. The better off one is in these areas, the greater the capacity to display skills.
Four to six workouts per week are good for a golf program, but a very hard workout should be done only once per week in season. While repetitions performed with quick, explosive motion are often recommended for speed conditioning, Kendal stresses the need for slow repetitions so that muscle tissue is trained to work efficiently in both contraction and relaxation phases. This is because the opposing muscle tissue for a muscle group in contraction must fully relax or it will resist and impede movement. This also applies to cardiovascular conditioning, where training at lower heart rates will help further increase cardiac output capacity.
The tests that I have performed using the Body Balance for Performance system are not as extensive as those used by Yonemoto, but are simple to perform on the lesson tee. Posture, pelvic tilt, shoulder alignment, neck/shoulder and pelvic flexibility, strength, balance, equilibrium and more may lie behind a swing idiosyncracy. Identifying the presence of an underlying cause, along with the player's goals, will help determine whether to correct the motion, correct the body, or work around a particular limitation.